Battle for Belorussia

Battle for Belorussia

The Red Army's Forgotten Campaign of October 1943 - April 1944

With Mary Elizabeth Glantz

David M. Glantz

Stone & Stone World War II Books Editor’s Choice

Continuing his magisterial account of the Eastern Front campaigns, the writer cited by The Atlantic as “indisputably the West’s foremost expert on the subject” focuses here on the Red Army’s operations from the fall of 1943 through the April 1944. David M. Glantz chronicles the Soviet Army's efforts to further exploit their post-Kursk gains and accelerate a counteroffensive that would eventually take them all the way to Berlin.

“This book is a must-read for those interested in the operational details of Eastern Front battles and understand military history jargon.”

—Slavic Review

“This book is an especially important contribution to David Glantz’s many books on the Red Army in World War II. The in-depth level of analysis of military operations in Belorussia as the Red Army gathered its strength authoritatively fills [a] gap in our knowledge.”

—Russian Review

“For a ‘forgotten’ series of offensives, Glantz leaves readers with few unknowns and an overwhelming number of knowns, making The Battle for Belorussia one of the most important books of the year.”

—Stone & Stone World War II Books

“Praise for the work of David Glantz:

A superb historian and a brilliant detective.”

—New York Review of Books

“Glantz is the world’s top scholar of the Soviet–German War.”

—Journal of Military History

“Indisputably the West’s foremost expert on the subject.”

—The Atlantic

“Glantz’s unrivalled command of Soviet sources has produced a body of work that has fundamentally revised our knowledge of the Eastern Front in World War II. By providing a comprehensive, accurate perspective on the war the Soviet Union fought, he has almost single-handedly corrected a one-sided German focus that distorted western understanding.”

—Slavic Review

“The appearance of any book by David Glantz is an event of the first magnitude.”

—World War II

The Red Army's Operation Bagration that liberated Belorussia in June 1944 sits like a colossus in the annals of World War II history. What is little noted in the history books, however, is that the Bagration offensive was not the Soviets’ first attempt. Battle for Belorussia tells the story of how, eight months earlier, and acting under the direction of Stalin and his Stavka, three Red Army fronts conducted multiple simultaneous and successive operations along a nearly 400-mile front in an effort to liberate Belorussia and capture Minsk, its capital city. The campaign, with over 700,000 casualties, was a Red Army failure.

Glantz describes in detail the series of offensives, with their markedly different and ultimately disappointing results, that, contrary to later accounts, effectively shifted Stalin’s focus to the Ukraine as a more manageable theater of military operations. Restoring the first Belorussian offensive to its place in history, this work also reveals for the first time what the later, successful Bagration operation owed to its forgotten precursor.

About the Author

David M. Glantz, an officer in the US Army from 1963 to 1993, is editor in chief of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. He is the author of numerous books, many from Kansas, including his celebrated Stalingrad Trilogy. Mary Elizabeth Glantz obtained a PhD in history from Temple University and is the author of the book FDR and the Soviet Union: The President’s Battle over Foreign Policy (Kansas).